Thursday, December 16, 2010

Do you read Sherwin Williams online magazine Stir? I get the emails and every and then they have an interesting and informative article. The latest one that caught my eye was one on the use of painted accent walls.

In the article they discuss the pros and cons of having one wall of bold color instead of painting the whole room. The author contributes the main use of accent walls as "Color Phobia". Saying that the owner is afraid to paint a whole room in a bold color. She says that accent walls should be used if the architecture calls for it.

She has some points and it got me thinking about my own home. I have accent walls in two rooms the dining room and living room.

In the living room the accent wall is on the same wall as the fireplace and built in bookshelf.

I choose this color because I saw it in a magazine and really like it. But I was afraid that it would darken the room to much. We only have 8' ceilings, the floor is dark wood, and though we have 2 good sized windows they are shaded by trees. So I didn't want the whole room this color.

After all the painting was done I realized I could have gone with a darker color for my accent wall because the accent color and field color are pretty close. The molding of the fireplace doesn't pop quite like I though it would. Hindsight is 20 x 20!

The other room that I used an accent wall is in the dining room. I wanted to carry the color of the curtains in the living room into that space.

It's hard to tell from this picture but the back wall is a citron green. You can see it better in this close up of the glass window:

Here again I felt that the architecture called for an accent wall. There is no point to stop and start the paint between the living and dining room. The large arch connecting the living and dining room doesn't allow for it, we don't have a closed corner to start and end two colors, so I went ahead and paint the field color throughout.

I like our one wall of green though, it's one of the first things you see when you enter our home and really draws your eye throughout the space.

In the Con- Man's room I went a head and painted all the walls blue.

His room gets tons of natural light so there was no worry about it being to dark. The blue is really soothing and goes well with the pops of green scattered throughout.

It doesn't seem to me to be a right or wrong answer, just whatever works for you and your home!

So what do you have more of in your home? Whole rooms of color or accents thrown in here and there?